


The New Apartment

by lionessvalenti



Series: An Interesting Series [3]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara's looking for a new apartment in the city, one in Neal's radius, and she discovers how difficult it is to find wheelchair accessibility in New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Apartment

Sara quietly opened her laptop in bed and hoped the whirring as the computer turned on wouldn't wake the sleeping Neal next to her. He was the lightest sleeper she'd ever known, but while she never asked him about it, she imagined that was a side effect of four years in prison.

She typed as lightly as possible, but it only took a few minutes for Neal to stir next to her. He turned on his side, which took a considerable amount of rustling and movement as he used his hands to get his legs to turn with the rest of his body. "Are you working?" he asked, his voice thick and low from sleep. "It's Sunday."

"I know what day it is," Sara replied as she looked away from the screen and down at him. She smiled. His hair had gone a bit curly throughout the night and was falling over his eyes. What he needed was a haircut, but Sara had to admit, she liked the longer hair. "I'm not working."

"What are you doing?" Neal pulled the comforter down, revealing Sara's thigh, and leaned down to kiss her leg, just along the line of her practical cotton panties.

She hesitated, but Neal didn't notice, as he was starting to work a hickey on her thigh (a little hobby of his, and she didn't mind as long as he reserved the marks for places she could cover up). It was something she'd been thinking about for a while, and she wasn't sure how Neal was going to react. He could be weird when she thought about moving their relationship forward. "I'm looking for a new apartment."

Neal looked up. "You're moving?"

"Into the city," Sara said. "I'm getting tired of going back and forth between here and Brooklyn. What I spend in a place in the city compared to my apartment now, I'll probably be saving money for what I'm paying in cab fare."

"Where are you thinking of moving to?" Neal's voice was a little strained, like he might be trying to find her ulterior motive.

"Around here. Maybe somewhere in the seventies." She made a face at her computer screen. "I had no idea how hard it was to find an accessible apartment. Everyone has stairs out front or no elevator. I doubt they'd be as willing to put in a ramp as June was."

"You're not... looking for an apartment for us, are you?"

"No, Neal, I'm not asking you to move in with me," Sara said, trying to sound as patient as possible. "But what I do want is to stay the night here during the week if I want to. It's too much trouble to go back to Park Slope and then back into the city to go to work. And I'd like it maybe you could come over. Not only is my apartment not in your radius, but there are front steps."

He looked a little relieved. He was quiet for a few minutes, and Sara had turned back to her computer until Neal said, "You should get a cat."

She blinked at him. "If I got a cat, I'd have to take care of it."

"That's how it works, but cats are easy. They practically take care of themselves."

"But they don't. You still have to feed them and clean out their boxes. What if I had to leave the country? I can get the call at any second and not have time to set up a cat-sitter."

"I could take of it when you're out of town," Neal suggested. "If you have a wheelchair accessible apartment in my radius, it wouldn't be a problem."

Sara studied him for a moment and then said, "It sounds like you're the one who wants a cat."

"I do," he replied, "but June's allergic. You know how cat hair gets everywhere, so it doesn't matter if I kept the cat in here."

Well, that wasn't selling Sara on the idea of a cat at all. She avoided animals when she could and the idea of cat hair everywhere sounded downright gross. Not to mention the litter boxes and cat puke. "I'm not really a cat person," she said. "Maybe if you ever did decide you wanted to move in, then we could get a cat. Then you could take care of it all the time."

Neal chuckled and kissed her thigh again. "Fair enough. Just don't ask me to help you move."

"Of course not," Sara replied with a smile. "I'm not a barbarian. I'll hire movers."

*

The first thing Sara learned about what the gross exaggeration of what people considered to be "wheelchair accessible." Some of them were honest mistakes, that all it took was an elevator, while forgetting about the front stairs or maybe they didn't realize how the accessible entrance was where the tenants piled their garbage. However, sometimes, she was absolutely positive they were doing it on purpose, just to drive her batty.

"These are steps," Sara said flatly to her first Realtor who had insisted that there was only a small curb to get into the back entrance of the building. However, there were three very distinct concrete stairs. She'd seen Neal pop some pretty impressive wheelies to get up onto sidewalk when the gutters were flooded or the streets were especially crowded, but there was no way he'd be able to get up these steps.

It didn't matter how perfect the apartment was in every other regard, it wasn't right if Neal couldn't get inside. Part of this was so he could come over to her place once in a while.

"This is ridiculous," Sara said after a few weeks, and having moved on to her second Realtor. She climbed into bed next to Neal and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I knew it was going to be hard to find the right place, but I didn't think it would be this difficult. It's taken over my entire life. If I'm not at work, I'm thinking about floor plans and accessible entrances. And then I get into these apartments and the doors are too narrow or there's only a tiny shower stall. And the newer buildings that are supposed to be up this accessible code are all out of price range."

"You don't have to do this," Neal said slowly. "If you just want to be closer, you don't have to find a completely accessible place just because of me."

Sara wanted to point out that she was moving in the first place because of him, but she took a deep breath instead, letting her thoughts sort themselves out before she spoke. "But if you can't get into my apartment, how will you take care of my hypothetical cat?"

He grinned. "It won't help with the cat problem, but you could... move in here."

She blinked at him, shocked. "Are you serious? You're the one who freaked out when I wanted to live in your radius."

"I'm not freaked out anymore. And I've been thinking about all the trouble you're going through to find a place just so I can come visit you."

"But you didn't want to move in together."

"I know, I..." Neal sighed. "You know I don't want..."

"For me to take care of you," Sara finished for him. They'd had the conversation twenty times already, but it was still hard for him to be seen as someone who needed to be taken care of, but she never saw him that way. "What changed?"

He shrugged. "This is stressing you out, and it's hard for me to watch. You could be closer and everything is already set up here for me. You could just move in if you wanted to."

Sara shook her head and threaded her fingers through his hair. "No, Neal, that's sweet, but I can't do that. We always talk about how you're not ready, but that's too fast for me. In your radius is close enough for now."

"If that's what you want," Neal replied, but if she wasn't mistaken, there was a hint of relief in his eyes.

"Well, I'm hoping my new Realtor will be able to help me more than my old one," Sara said. "We actually had a lengthy discussion about all of my particular needs. I think she understands, and then I can be a little less stressed out. I hope so, anyway. I've been so wired, lately."

Neal slid his hand up her thigh and pressed his thumb against the front of her panties. "I can think of a few ways to burn off some of that energy."

She smiled. "I'm in."

*

Sara swore to never move again, but finally, after all the checks (deposits and credit checks alike) had gone through, she stood in her very first Manhattan apartment on West 64th, less than a block from Central Park, and within walking distance of Lincoln Center.

Her new Realtor had been a godsend, actually listening to what Sara needed out of her apartment, and found her three prospects within a week. One was far too small, the second had wall-to-wall carpeting (which was difficult for Neal to move through), and the third was a little too expensive, almost five hundred dollars over her budget, but it was the one she chose. The location was perfect and Neal could go inside through the front door and not some service entrance in the alley. It had an open floor plan, including the kitchen, meaning Neal could cook for her when he came over. Plus, it had a working fireplace, a real bath tub, and two walk-in closets. She could save up for her next pair of Louboutins.

"It's beautiful," Neal said, wheeling forward in the empty living room. "It's a shame you don't have a park view."

"I'll take what I can get," She replied with a grin. She sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck while his hands crept over her hips. "At least I'm not staring into someone else's window. I'll take the street any day. Can you imagine how it's going to look in here when I actually get my furniture into it?"

"How about your bed?" Neal asked. He reached up and brushed her hair away from her face. "What's it going to be like with one of those?"

Sara chuckled. "Pretty amazing, and you don't even have to wait long. Everything will be here tomorrow, though it'll mostly be in boxes. But I do have two flutes and a bottle of champagne in the fridge if you're interested in a little pre-housewarming housewarming."

"That sounds great," Neal replied.

She kissed his cheek and got to her feet, heading toward the kitchen. She opened up the bottle of champagne and when she returned with two glasses, Neal had a small, brown box, maybe the size of a loaf of bread, sitting on his lap. She had no idea where he'd hidden it. There was space under the seat of his chair where he kept his leather bag of supplies, but there wasn't a lot of space there. In these circumstances, it was easier to assume some kind of Neal Caffrey magic was at hand.

"Oh, god, please tell me that's not a cat," she said, setting the glasses down on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

Neal laughed. "I cannot tell you that. It's your first housewarming present, you should open it."

"Then you better be packing a litter box under your seat. It is not crapping all over my new apartment."

He picked up the box and held it out to her. "Open it," he said again, giving the box a tantalizing little shake.

Reluctantly, she took the box from him, and to her relief, there wasn't any movement from inside. She pulled open the lid and inside was a stuffed grey tabby cat with sad looking green, plastic eyes. Sara laughed as she pulled it out of the box. She had been a teenager the last time someone had given her a stuffed animal, a knock-off Scooby-Doo at a county fair. This was better.

"This is my kind of cat," she said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Neal replied. "I thought we should open this place up with a laugh. It's going to be a happy place."

Clutching the stuffed animal to her chest, Sara grinned. "I think you're right."


End file.
